Enough is Enough! Celebrities’ Cyberbullying Coping Strategies

• Main Authors: Hassan, Syahida, Yacob, Mohd Idzwan, Roslan, Nur Fairuza Syahira, Nguyen, Thuan, Mahad, Azlina, Ahmad, Azlinda
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: T Technology (General)
• Online Access: https://repo.uum.edu.my/id/eprint/29932/1/UUM%20IQRC%202022_59_65.pdf; https://repo.uum.edu.my/id/eprint/29932/
• Institution: Universiti Utara Malaysia

Cyberbullying frequently occurs on social media. Celebrities, who have connected to their fans through social media, are frequent victims of cyberbullying. To date, the research focusing on celebrities’ cyberbullying is minimal, therefore suffers limited knowledge of this area. Thus, celebrities’ behaviours in coping with cyberbullying remain relatively unclear. This study aims to explore celebrities’ coping strategies for cyberbullying. Adopting a qualitative approach, we interviewed ten celebrities to explore their coping strategies. In addition, we observed 30 celebrities’ accounts on social media to understand their coping behaviour. The findings show that celebrities usually adopted technological coping, avoidance coping, emotion-focused coping, and active/aggressive coping strategies. The results contribute to the existing literature on cyberbullying studies, particularly cyberbullying towards celebrities.